Charles Keif-Kobai, Project Officer, National Elections Watch (NEW) and Madam Femi Claudius Cole, Chair Person, Consortium of Progressive Political Parties (COPPP), have both expressed dissatisfaction and frowned at what they referred to as undue delay of the National Electoral Commission to announce date for 2022 local council elections.

Speaking on the issue yesterday morning during the popular Wake Up Salone  programme on the African Young Voices Television (AYV), Charles Keif-Kobai of the NEW  charged that  NEC has failed to stand by it institutional framework by not working with elections timetable.

“Local council elections are supposed to be held in March 2022, but we are yet to hear from NEC. Had it been there was going to be any delay in the elections beyond March this year, Parliament would have enacted a law for the postponement of local council elections since last year. Therefore, we are really concerned, because Parliament can no longer do any postponement when it is two months to the elections,” Charles stated.

He blames political parties for not taking institutions like NEC to court for such negligence of their duty.

In her submission, Femi Claudius Cole decries the undue delay to announce date for the 2022 local council elections, claiming that NEC was dancing to the tune of the sitting government because they fund and appoint senior officials of the institution.

 “Taking NEC to court would not yield any fruitful dividend because institutions like the Judiciary and others are well captured by the state because they dance to their tune. We are just talking quite a lot about the date, but there are many other issues such as distribution of polling centres and other elections management issues that NEC is not discussing with political parties,” she stated.

She said the attitude of NEC has shown that they are unable, incompetent and inefficient to conduct free, fair and credible elections, which she said, is of huge concern to all Sierra Leoneans.

Concord Times also tried to reach NEC on the issue of local council elections date, but to no avail.